DEF JAM will probably never sign them, but Cheikh Oumar Cyrille Touré, from a small town about 100 miles southeast of Dakar, Senegal, and Hamada Ben Amor, a 22-year-old man from a port city 170 miles southeast of Tunis, may be two of the most influential rappers in the history of hip-hop. [“shallow pop music and love songs got heavy airplay on the radio, but when the revolution broke out, people woke up and refused to accept shallow music with no substance.”]

It was Clarissa Azcona’s 17th birthday and her stepfather, Miguel Torres, promised to leave work early and take the family to dinner.

But then a kid got shot in the head in a drive-by outside Torres’ neighborhood grocery store in Newark, and the birthday celebration was off. Police cordoned the block and Torres spent the evening answering detectives’ questions and handing over his surveillance tapes. The store’s newly painted yellow brick wall was pock-marked by a few dozen 9-millimeter and AK-47 rounds. [“All he wanted for us was to go to college, so we wouldn’t have to work the kinds of jobs he did. He didn’t want us working in a bodega.”]

In a world saturated with trivia, nothing pretends it matters quite like sports. To be fair, they can be significant. Not in the sense which leads him to fold under pressure or her to become clutch; but in a much deeper, cultural context.

Blind to injustice affecting their friends, and the corruption which slows their own progress; millions assign a larger slice of attention to the success of athletes they’ll never meet. Forty-four years ago sports nearly changed the world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered months before it could; so in turn the world changed sports.

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The following are the words of Natasha Allen, member of the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition. She spoke at the intersection of Dewey Street and St. James Place on Wednesday, Jan. 3rd. to demand mayor Cory Booker declare violence a public health emergency after the death of two-year old Mi’Khy Robinson. 
“My heart is broken, and I believe they say God knows all things. So maybe the baby is in a better place. Because what we’re surrounded by is a whole lot of sickness. It’s time for us to stand up and make a decision that we gotta do alotta things different. And it starts in my house first.”

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